The bosses at two of Britain’s best-known firms were dealt a stinging blow by investors protesting at their lavish pay rewards.

Durex and KY Jelly owner Reckitt Benckiser saw 42.8 per cent of shareholders refuse to back its directors’ remuneration report, while online grocer Ocado also suffered a revolt as 39.9 per cent of investors followed suit.

Shareholders in some of Britain’s biggest firms have recently been flexing their muscles when they felt the rewards of senior executives were not closely enough aligned with performance.

At Anglo-Dutch healthcare giant Reckitt (up 11p to 4846p) chief executive Rakesh Kapoor has had a disappointing year in which conditions deteriorated across many of his key markets. Despite this, Kapoor’s base salary increased to £832,000 from £800,000 and his annual bonus doubled to £3.5million, accumulating in total to a pay reward of £6.6million.

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But shareholders were aggrieved the firm had not spelt out what the targets were for setting the bonus, claiming it was commercially sensitive. Only earnings per share were used to trigger the vesting of the long-term incentive scheme. A spokesman said: ‘We are in regular contact with our shareholders to listen to their requirements.’

At Ocado (down 17.9p to 311.3p) shareholders objected to the share price being used as the main performance criteria for rewards, as well as a one-off award scheme that triggers large handouts of shares.

An Ocado spokeswoman said it had consulted key shareholders ‘and senior managers are aligned with the interest of the company at a crucial period in the future’.

- At interbroker dealer ICAP, Sir Michael Spencer will accept a £700,000 bonus for the period which saw the fixing of Libor and the firm being fined £55million. He had no knowledge of the offence.